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What Coaching Is and What Coaching is not: A Quick Explanation of Life Coaching




Video Transcript:

Hello, I'm Kimberly Collins and welcome to my dirty car. I'm an enneagram coach and an author, and today I thought I'd do a little video blog about what coaching is and what coaching is not so you can see if coaching is the right thing for you.


So what coaching is, is a partnership between a client and a coach, and all services are based on Client-centered ideas as well as they are led by the client. That means that coaching sessions are meant to facilitate the creation and development of personal, professional, or vocational goals. As well as developing a plan and strategy for achieving those goals, the general focus of coaching sessions is Growth and where you are in your present situation and where you would like to be in the future. So not a lot of focus on the past; that would be more of a therapy thing.


The guiding assumptions of any kind of coaching session would be that the client is really resourced. They're able to create the life that they want, and they alone hold kind of the keys and the information that they need to do that. So that goes into like the client is really the expert in their lives, and the coach is here to facilitate that for them.

So the coach's role in a session then would be to ask really powerful questions that help the client who knows everything they need to know about their lives remove limiting beliefs, clear up any kind of confusion that they have, and develop a path forward based on the information that they already know.


The relationship between coaching and therapy is kind of interesting. So Therapy is to coaching what a physician is to a personal trainer. So doctors and therapists, they take people who are unwell or unstable in a certain area and bring them up to a stable and well space. Personal trainers or coaches, they then take that person who's well and stable and bring them up to high performance or clear up those areas in their lives that they have lower sense. So, coaching is not therapy and it's definitely not a substitute for that.


So, let's just talk a little bit about what coaching is not. That is exactly the first thing is not. It's not therapy and it's not counseling and it's not advising. So it's a lot of powerful questions that help somebody come to the conclusion about what they want to do with their own lives. Coaching is not a substitute for psychotherapy, seeing as psychiatrist, mental health care, substance abuse, legal medical treatment, any of these things.


So, coaching is not about taking you from feeling unwell or unstable in a certain area and bringing you to a healthy place, but taking you from a healthy place where you're pretty stable but maybe unsatisfied in that area and bringing you to a higher satisfaction in that area or a higher performance. So I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, always feel free to reach out or email me. Bye.


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